Anne of Green Gables
CHAPTER XX
A Good Imagination Gone Wrong
Spring had come once more to Green Gables—the beautiful capricious, reluctant
Canadian spring, lingering along through April and May in a succession of sweet,
fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles of resurrection and growth.
The maples in Lover's Lane were red budded and little curly ferns pushed up
around the Dryad's Bubble. Away up in the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane's
place, the Mayflowers blossomed out, pink and white stars of sweetness under
their brown leaves. All the school girls and boys had one golden afternoon
gathering them, coming home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets
full of flowery spoil.
"I'm so sorry for people who live in lands where there are no Mayflowers,"
said Anne. "Diana says perhaps they have something better, but there couldn't be
anything better than Mayflowers, could there, Marilla? And Diana says if they
don't know what they are like they don't miss them. But I think that is the
saddest thing of all. I think it would be TRAGIC, Marilla, not to know what
Mayflowers are like and NOT to miss them. Do you know what I think Mayflowers
are, Marilla? I think they must be the souls of the flowers that died last
summer and this is their heaven. But we had a splendid time today, Marilla. We
had our lunch down in a big mossy hollow by an old well—such a ROMANTIC spot.
Charlie Sloane dared Arty Gillis to jump over it, and Arty did because he
wouldn't take a dare. Nobody would in school. It is very FASHIONABLE to dare.
Mr. Phillips gave all the Mayflowers he found to Prissy Andrews and I heard him
to say 'sweets to the sweet.' He got that out of a book, I know; but it shows he
has some imagination. I was offered some Mayflowers too, but I rejected them
with scorn. I can't tell you the person's name because I have vowed never to let
it cross my lips. We made wreaths of the Mayflowers and put them on our hats;
and when the time came to go home we marched in procession down the road, two by
two, with our bouquets and wreaths, singing 'My Home on the Hill.' Oh, it was so
thrilling, Marilla. All Mr. Silas Sloane's folks rushed out to see us and
everybody we met on the road stopped and stared after us. We made a real
sensation."
"Not much wonder! Such silly doings!" was Marilla's response.
After the Mayflowers came the violets, and Violet Vale was empurpled with
them. Anne walked through it on her way to school with reverent steps and
worshiping eyes, as if she trod on holy ground.
"Somehow," she told Diana, "when I'm going through here I don't really care
whether Gil—whether anybody gets ahead of me in class or not. But when I'm up in
school it's all different and I care as much as ever. There's such a lot of
different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome
person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable,
but then it wouldn't be half so interesting."
One June evening, when the orchards were pink blossomed again, when the frogs
were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about the head of the Lake of Shining
Waters, and the air was full of the savor of clover fields and balsamic fir
woods, Anne was sitting by her gable window. She had been studying her lessons,
but it had grown too dark to see the book, so she had fallen into wide-eyed
reverie, looking out past the boughs of the Snow Queen, once more bestarred with
its tufts of blossom.
In all essential respects the little gable chamber was unchanged. The walls
were as white, the pincushion as hard, the chairs as stiffly and yellowly
upright as ever. Yet the whole character of the room was altered. It was full of
a new vital, pulsing personality that seemed to pervade it and to be quite
independent of schoolgirl books and dresses and ribbons, and even of the cracked
blue jug full of apple blossoms on the table. It was as if all the dreams,
sleeping and waking, of its vivid occupant had taken a visible although
unmaterial form and had tapestried the bare room with splendid filmy tissues of
rainbow and moonshine. Presently Marilla came briskly in with some of Anne's
freshly ironed school aprons. She hung them over a chair and sat down with a
short sigh. She had had one of her headaches that afternoon, and although the
pain had gone she felt weak and "tuckered out," as she expressed it. Anne looked
at her with eyes limpid with sympathy.
"I do truly wish I could have had the headache in your place, Marilla. I
would have endured it joyfully for your sake."
"I guess you did your part in attending to the work and letting me rest,"
said Marilla. "You seem to have got on fairly well and made fewer mistakes than
usual. Of course it wasn't exactly necessary to starch Matthew's handkerchiefs!
And most people when they put a pie in the oven to warm up for dinner take it
out and eat it when it gets hot instead of leaving it to be burned to a crisp.
But that doesn't seem to be your way evidently."
Headaches always left Marilla somewhat sarcastic.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Anne penitently. "I never thought about that pie
from the moment I put it in the oven till now, although I felt INSTINCTIVELY
that there was something missing on the dinner table. I was firmly resolved,
when you left me in charge this morning, not to imagine anything, but keep my
thoughts on facts. I did pretty well until I put the pie in, and then an
irresistible temptation came to me to imagine I was an enchanted princess shut
up in a lonely tower with a handsome knight riding to my rescue on a coal-black
steed. So that is how I came to forget the pie. I didn't know I starched the
handkerchiefs. All the time I was ironing I was trying to think of a name for a
new island Diana and I have discovered up the brook. It's the most ravishing
spot, Marilla. There are two maple trees on it and the brook flows right around
it. At last it struck me that it would be splendid to call it Victoria Island
because we found it on the Queen's birthday. Both Diana and I are very loyal.
But I'm sorry about that pie and the handkerchiefs. I wanted to be extra good
today because it's an anniversary. Do you remember what happened this day last
year, Marilla?"
"No, I can't think of anything special."
"Oh, Marilla, it was the day I came to Green Gables. I shall never forget it.
It was the turning point in my life. Of course it wouldn't seem so important to
you. I've been here for a year and I've been so happy. Of course, I've had my
troubles, but one can live down troubles. Are you sorry you kept me, Marilla?"
"No, I can't say I'm sorry," said Marilla, who sometimes wondered how she
could have lived before Anne came to Green Gables, "no, not exactly sorry. If
you've finished your lessons, Anne, I want you to run over and ask Mrs. Barry if
she'll lend me Diana's apron pattern."
"Oh—it's—it's too dark," cried Anne.
"Too dark? Why, it's only twilight. And goodness knows you've gone over often
enough after dark."
"I'll go over early in the morning," said Anne eagerly. "I'll get up at
sunrise and go over, Marilla."
"What has got into your head now, Anne Shirley? I want that pattern to cut
out your new apron this evening. Go at once and be smart too."
"I'll have to go around by the road, then," said Anne, taking up her hat
reluctantly.
"Go by the road and waste half an hour! I'd like to catch you!"
"I can't go through the Haunted Wood, Marilla," cried Anne desperately.
Marilla stared.
"The Haunted Wood! Are you crazy? What under the canopy is the Haunted Wood?"
"The spruce wood over the brook," said Anne in a whisper.
"Fiddlesticks! There is no such thing as a haunted wood anywhere. Who has
been telling you such stuff?"
"Nobody," confessed Anne. "Diana and I just imagined the wood was
haunted. All the places around here are so—so—COMMONPLACE. We just got
this up for our own amusement. We began it in April. A haunted wood is
so very romantic, Marilla. We chose the spruce grove because it's so
gloomy. Oh, we have imagined the most harrowing things. There's a white
lady walks along the brook just about this time of the night and wrings
her hands and utters wailing cries. She appears when there is to be a
death in the family. And the ghost of a little murdered child haunts the
corner up by Idlewild; it creeps up behind you and lays its cold fingers
on your hand—so. Oh, Marilla, it gives me a shudder to think of it. And
there's a headless man stalks up and down the path and skeletons glower
at you between the boughs. Oh, Marilla, I wouldn't go through the
Haunted Wood after dark now for anything. I'd be sure that white things
would reach out from behind the trees and grab me."
"Did ever anyone hear the like!" ejaculated Marilla, who had
listened in dumb amazement. "Anne Shirley, do you mean to tell me you
believe all that wicked nonsense of your own imagination?"
"Not believe EXACTLY," faltered Anne. "At least, I don't believe it in
daylight. But after dark, Marilla, it's different. That is when ghosts walk."
"There are no such things as ghosts, Anne."
"Oh, but there are, Marilla," cried Anne eagerly. "I know people who have
seen them. And they are respectable people. Charlie Sloane says that his
grandmother saw his grandfather driving home the cows one night after he'd been
buried for a year. You know Charlie Sloane's grandmother wouldn't tell a story
for anything. She's a very religious woman. And Mrs. Thomas's father was pursued
home one night by a lamb of fire with its head cut off hanging by a strip of
skin. He said he knew it was the spirit of his brother and that it was a warning
he would die within nine days. He didn't, but he died two years after, so you
see it was really true. And Ruby Gillis says—"
"Anne Shirley," interrupted Marilla firmly, "I never want to hear you talking
in this fashion again. I've had my doubts about that imagination of yours right
along, and if this is going to be the outcome of it, I won't countenance any
such doings. You'll go right over to Barry's, and you'll go through that spruce
grove, just for a lesson and a warning to you. And never let me hear a word out
of your head about haunted woods again."
Anne might plead and cry as she liked—and did, for her terror was very real.
Her imagination had run away with her and she held the spruce grove in mortal
dread after nightfall. But Marilla was inexorable. She marched the shrinking
ghost-seer down to the spring and ordered her to proceed straightaway over the
bridge and into the dusky retreats of wailing ladies and headless specters
beyond.
"Oh, Marilla, how can you be so cruel?" sobbed Anne. "What would you feel
like if a white thing did snatch me up and carry me off?"
"I'll risk it," said Marilla unfeelingly. "You know I always mean what I say.
I'll cure you of imagining ghosts into places. March, now."
Anne marched. That is, she stumbled over the bridge and went shuddering up
the horrible dim path beyond. Anne never forgot that walk. Bitterly did she
repent the license she had given to her imagination. The goblins of her fancy
lurked in every shadow about her, reaching out their cold, fleshless hands to
grasp the terrified small girl who had called them into being. A white strip of
birch bark blowing up from the hollow over the brown floor of the grove made her
heart stand still. The long-drawn wail of two old boughs rubbing against each
other brought out the perspiration in beads on her forehead. The swoop of bats
in the darkness over her was as the wings of unearthly creatures. When she
reached Mr. William Bell's field she fled across it as if pursued by an army of
white things, and arrived at the Barry kitchen door so out of breath that she
could hardly gasp out her request for the apron pattern. Diana was away so that
she had no excuse to linger. The dreadful return journey had to be faced. Anne
went back over it with shut eyes, preferring to take the risk of dashing her
brains out among the boughs to that of seeing a white thing. When she finally
stumbled over the log bridge she drew one long shivering breath of relief.
"Well, so nothing caught you?" said Marilla unsympathetically.
"Oh, Mar—Marilla," chattered Anne, "I'll b-b-be contt-tented with
c-c-commonplace places after this."